New Music (at least for me)

In Tim-istic style, here is a collections of thoughts/remarks on my recent musical encounters:

1) Enter the Worship Circle is doing a house-concert tour. Long story short, we WILL find a way to have them play at one of our friend's places, if not more.

2) While reading about that, we found that ETWC is looking for people to send in their own original songs to be available on their website. Katy found a great song there. It's called "Carry Us Over" by Kelli Schaefer at The Bridge in Portland. It is the best song I have heard in a long, long time. It is a modern-day spiritual with Ben-Harper-esque blues harmonies and authentic desert/PromiseLand lyrics lamenting the difficulty of sobriety. You can hear it at http://www.entertheworshipcircle.com/international/original%20submissions/carry%20us%20over%20(most%20of%20it).mp3

3) Katy and I were recently able to get some new music in our library. So far, we got "Grace In The Wilderness" by Eoghan Heaslip and "Great River Road" by Jason Upton, as well as "Songs From The Voice, Vol 1: Please Don't Make Me Sing This" by Various artists including 100 Portraits and Derek Webb. "Grace In The Wilderness" is a powerful worship album, not as much for its musical strength, but moreso for the quality of its praise-focused lyrics. Heaslip surrounds himself with people steeped in theology who critique the motivation and content of his songs before they go public, which has led to this incredible product (as well as making his 2003 album "Mercy" the Best worship Album of the Year). Also, props for fitting "Jehovah-Nissi" seamlessly into a song. "Great River Road" is not that great of an album in itself. However, Katy and I have been diving into Jason Upton's worship music and have loved it. My favorite song of his right now is the one that plays in the background on his website (http://www.jasonupton.net/com/). The cd also contains video footage of interviews about each song and his worship project in general. His newest album is on grassrootsmusic.com autographed for $10, for anyone interested in his work. "Songs from The Voice, Vol 1" is very inaccessible, in my opinion. I should have realized this when the front cover says, "Please don't make me sing this." I love Bible passages turned melody, I just need more time devoted to listening to the album. We have our eyes set on Robin Mark's new album, some album with Shawn McDonald's "Here I Am," as well as many others. We'll see what we get next.

4) Katy and I have received prophecies almost since the day that we got to this church that we would write worship music. That seemed very unlikely to me since I had never written music before (except a poor attempt in Independent Study Music Theory wherein I mainly focused on the interconnectedness of chords within a key). I have been categorized the majority of my life as "creative" (somewhat, this was done to show the difference between Tim and I - Tim being "left-brained," Tom being "right-brained; somewhat, this was due to people believing that music and drawing are simply "creative" activities. looking back, those activities for me have always involved 3-d visualization, analytical comparison, and mathematical properties of chords, octaves, and rhythm - some other blog, I guess). However, creating anything, especially music, does NOT come naturally to me - at all. so when Katy and I started writing worship songs in the last couple of weeks, it amazed me. We'll see what God has in store for the songs he is giving us.

5) Last night was the first time that we've used any of the songs we have written in a corporate worship setting. I thought we had snuck one seemlessly into the worship set until one friend approached me afterwards to ask if one of the songs we sang was an "original." Then, I saw him pointing to "Rush River, Rush," the song RIGHT BEFORE the song we had written! We even sang another song we had written during a time of prayer and worship.

6) Not only have we been able to write songs at home when we have time to come up with chord progressions, melodies, and just the right words, we have been able to do it on the spot. During the prayer time, one of the pastors said, "Sing a song like 'Let Your river Flow' or some song like that about a river." Realizing we had already sung "Rush river, Rush" too much that night, I quickly but unnoticeably tried to figure out the chords to "Let Your River Flow." I realized quickly that I wasn't going to get it quick enough, so I decided we would have to come up with a song on the spot. I picked a chord progression and picking pattern, played through it a time or two to find a starting melody and then one more time to pick some words to start with and away we went. The melody stuck and the first verse that I sang opened the way for Katy's second verse, which very quickly brought about a heightened level of manifest, tangible presence in the room.

I could keep going, but I need to get going to sleep. Oh yeah, and we also recently got "Glory Revealed" by artists like Mac Powell, Shane and Shane, David Crowder, and others. It's an incredbile renaissance of Biblical lyrics based out of non-pop passages (although popular among those who regularly read passages outside of the gospels and Pauline epistles).

okay, falling asleep now.